Moved here from notes/reasoning/eucharist.md in the tier migration. The per-question reasoning now lives on each doctrine’s reasoning page: S04.1 · S05.1 · S04.2.

Eucharist: reasoning steps

Verdicts: categories/eucharist.md. Weighing criteria as in justification reasoning: Scripture in context and original language; each father’s polemical setting; date and breadth of witness; explicit beats inferred; unverified texts carry no weight.

Post-750 development by tradition

Catholic

Trent XIII ch. 4 (Waterworth, verified): “a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ”. Trent XXII ch. 2 (ct22, verified): the Mass “is truly propitiatory”; “that same Christ is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner”. Matches E1 and E2. E3 is sharpened with substance metaphysics, which is a later precision.

Orthodox

Dositheus Decree 17 (crivoice, verified): “the bread is transmuted, transubstantiated, converted and transformed into the true Body Itself”, and the presence is not “by impanation … as the followers of Luther”. Matches E1 and E2. Dositheus adopts Latin terms (accidents), while Orthodox writers more widely prefer John of Damascus, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith IV.13 (New Advent / NPNF, verified): the bread and wine are “supernaturally changed by the invocation and presence of the Holy Spirit into the body and blood of Christ”, and “the manner of this cannot be searched out”.

Lutheran

Augsburg Confession X (bookofconcord.org, verified): “the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat”. Matches E1. Rejects the Mass as taking away sins by the outward act: ‘if the Mass take away the sins of the living and the dead by the outward act justification comes of the work of Masses, and not of faith’ (AC XXIV.29, verified), which departs on E2. On E3 it does not hold a change of the elements.

Presbyterian

WCF XXIX (opc.org, verified). §2: “Christ is not offered up to his Father; nor any real sacrifice made at all … but only a commemoration”. §7: “not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers”. Departs from the fathers on E1 (the realist texts) and E2; it can claim Augustine’s sign language only in part.

Presbyterian: additional cells (nine-tradition expansion)

• E3 (fathers 1/4; Scripture n/a): WCF XXIX.6: transubstantiation ‘repugnant … to common sense’.

Oriental Orthodox

Sources: Oriental Orthodox confessional sources. Classic formulations only.

• E1 (fathers 4/4; Scripture 4/4): Armenian Badarak: ’let us taste of the holy, holy and precious body and blood of our Lord … This is life, hope of resurrection, propitiation and remission of sins’ (verified).
• E2 (fathers 4/4; Scripture 2/4): Armenian Badarak: ‘Son of God, Who art sacrificed to the Father for reconciliation’; Nerses Shnorhali calls it ’the Holy Sacrifice’ (verified).
• E3 (fathers 4/4; Scripture n/a): Real change; the Coptic rite speaks of ’the transubstantiation of the Bread to the Body of Christ’ (verified: Bishop Mettaous, copticchurch.net), without a scholastic account of mode.

Anglican

Sources: Anglican confessional sources. Classic formulations only.

• E1 (fathers 2/4; Scripture 3/4): Art. XXVIII: ’the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ’, ‘only after an heavenly and spiritual manner’.
• E2 (fathers 1/4; Scripture 3/4): Art. XXXI: ’the sacrifices of Masses … were blasphemous fables’.
• E3 (fathers 1/4; Scripture n/a): Art. XXVIII: transubstantiation ‘repugnant to the plain words of Scripture’.

Reformed Baptist

Sources: Reformed Baptist confessional sources. Classic formulations only.

• E1 (fathers 1/4; Scripture 2/4): 1689 30.7: Christ ‘spiritually present to the faith of believers’.
• E2 (fathers 0/4; Scripture 3/4): 1689 30.2: ’nor any real sacrifice made at all for remission of sin’, ‘only a memorial’.
• E3 (fathers 1/4; Scripture n/a): 1689 30.6 rejects transubstantiation.

General Baptist

Sources: General Baptist confessional sources. Classic formulations only.

• E1 (fathers 1/4; Scripture 2/4): SC 1660 art. 13: ‘breaking of Bread’; Orthodox Creed 33: ‘perpetual Remembrance’ and ‘Spiritual Nourishment’, applied ‘by Faith’, rejecting transubstantiation and ‘Consubstantiation’ (verified, fresh OCR of the 1679 printing).
• E2 (fathers 1/4; Scripture 3/4): No sacrifice language (SC 1660 art. 13).
• E3 (fathers 1/4; Scripture n/a): No change taught.

Anabaptist

Sources: Anabaptist confessional sources. Classic formulations only.

• E1 (fathers 1/4; Scripture 1/4): Dordrecht X: kept ‘in remembrance of Him’; Menno: ‘a living and an affecting sign’ (verified).
• E2 (fathers 1/4; Scripture 3/4): Dordrecht X: remembrance only.
• E3 (fathers 1/4; Scripture n/a): No change taught.